AA autorenewal - when haggling goes wrong

[Deleted User]

Beware - the AA gave me a quote of £223.80 for renewal so I said I would go elsewhere. They reduced it to £167 and I still said I would go elsewhere because it was too high and the phone queue times were ridiculous. I told them I didn’t want to renew but they still requested £223.50 (not even the £167 “reduction”) from my credit card company. This was declined and I phoned the credit card company to tell them that I didn’t want to renew. They said the only way to guarantee this was to cancel my credit card and issue me with a new one, which I agreed to immediately. I told the AA again that I didn’t want to renew. I joined the RAC and threw away all my AA paperwork and the card. 

The sneaky AA then requested the payment again a week later. The credit card company allowed this to autorenew. The AA are investigating but it “could take up to 8 weeks” which means a very frugal Christmas. 

Don’t trust the AA, and ensure that if you are preparing to haggle your autorenewal is definitely cancelled. Otherwise they will just take the payment anyway. I will never do business with them again. In the meantime I am taking this up with the credit card company, who are equally at fault as they allowed autorenewal on a new card despite me telling them I didn’t want to renew with the AA and they should not pay them under any circumstances. 

Sandtree

Card Updater Service means that just cancelling a card doesnt stop CPAs from going through, though even before Card Updater it still rarely did but was bank specific. With Card Updater Service your bank can inform the merchant that their merchant ID has been blocked and they shouldnt process payment but it is a blunt tool, you can only block all or no payments rather than selectively cancel one payment but not another (eg if you had two policies).

If you've told them not to renew it then the complaint will be simple to deal with and should take a lot less than the 8 weeks that the FOS gives them.

You can also register a complaint with your card issuer for not having stopped the payment as per your instructions. Secondly you can ask them to do a chargeback on the payment which with most banks will give you the money back straight away with the caveat that they can recharge if the merchant defends and they side with the merchant. The merchant has 45 days to respond but the bank may have backlogs to review the responses so total timeline can be longer.

Jenni_D

And if a chargeback is challenged then raise a S75 claim against your card provider - even though S75 makes them legally jointly liable with the AA, they are equally liable here anyway.  

Sandtree

Jenni_D said:

And if a chargeback is challenged then raise a S75 claim against your card provider - even though S75 makes them legally jointly liable with the AA, they are equally liable here anyway.  

Absolutely true but after the chargeback process is complete the AA complaint will be complete.

A S75 will be difficult to do because it was just a telephone call to advise to cancel and so no evidence, AA will listen to the call recording (assume it exists) and read file notes and if it substantiates what the OP says will refund anyway. If the call recording doesnt substantiate the OP's recollection of the call then any SARs request to get a copy of the call to support the S75 claim is likely to equally be unhelpful.

Jenni_D

The chances of the card provider not having records of any of the OP's (at least) 2 calls is unlikely, especially when they* recommended cancelling the old card.  

(* We can only take the OP's story at face value).

Grey_Critic

I specifically state I do not auto-renew. Several years ago I found an insurer had done so even though I had it in writing from them acknowledging I did not accept auto-renew. Got my money back from the bank but they then tried to claim for a period where they claimed they incurred an insurance risk. Still trying - I keep suggesting they might like to go to court where I will produce the correspondence - so far they have declined.

Sandtree

Jenni_D said:

The chances of the card provider not having records of any of the OP's (at least) 2 calls is unlikely, especially when they* recommended cancelling the old card.  

(* We can only take the OP's story at face value).

Ok... that however would be dealt with under the complaint to the Bank rather than a S75 claim.

If we take a more clear cut scenario where the bank alone told them that they could stop the payment by cancelling the card for them and the customer never called the insurer to cancel the renewal... a complaint could be logged against the bank because the payment went through however no S75 complaint could be raised because the merchant isnt liable for returning the premium as cancelling payment method doesnt cancel the renewal and S75 just mirrors the merchants liability to the bank.

So in the actual scenario for a S75 claim to work they must show that they told the AA not to renew, the fact the bank told them cancelling the card would stop the renewal is untrue so the grounds for a complaint but not grounds for a S75 succeeding. 

Advocado

Jenni_D said:

The chances of the card provider not having records of any of the OP's (at least) 2 calls is unlikely, especially when they* recommended cancelling the old card.  

(* We can only take the OP's story at face value).

That’s the case with anything written on these forums. 

Jenni_D

Advocado said:

Jenni_D said:

The chances of the card provider not having records of any of the OP's (at least) 2 calls is unlikely, especially when they* recommended cancelling the old card.  

(* We can only take the OP's story at face value).

That’s the case with anything written on these forums. 

Really? Some of the responses to some threads here at MSE make me wonder.  

born_again

Deleted_User said:

Beware - the AA gave me a quote of £223.80 for renewal so I said I would go elsewhere. They reduced it to £167 and I still said I would go elsewhere because it was too high and the phone queue times were ridiculous. I told them I didn’t want to renew but they still requested £223.50 (not even the £167 “reduction”) from my credit card company. This was declined and I phoned the credit card company to tell them that I didn’t want to renew. They said the only way to guarantee this was to cancel my credit card and issue me with a new one, which I agreed to immediately. I told the AA again that I didn’t want to renew. I joined the RAC and threw away all my AA paperwork and the card. 

The sneaky AA then requested the payment again a week later. The credit card company allowed this to autorenew. The AA are investigating but it “could take up to 8 weeks” which means a very frugal Christmas. 

Don’t trust the AA, and ensure that if you are preparing to haggle your autorenewal is definitely cancelled. Otherwise they will just take the payment anyway. I will never do business with them again. In the meantime I am taking this up with the credit card company, who are equally at fault as they allowed autorenewal on a new card despite me telling them I didn’t want to renew with the AA and they should not pay them under any circumstances. 

A couple of points. Stopping a card NEVER stops a auto renewal.
AA have requested the new card number from Visa or Mastercard as per their right under their card agreement. Yout card company has no part in this.
Had you left the card live it could have been added to the card system to block any payment to the AA. 

If you told the AA that you wanted to cancel prior to them taking the funds then a chargeback might/should do the job.